Isn't bathroom technology great? Urinals that flush themselves. Automated faucets. Automated soap dispensers. Hand-wave controlled towel dispensers. It all sounds like a germaphobe's wet-dream, right? Except for when these wonders of technology don't work. Which is like...all the time.

Alaska Airlines, with help from agency WONGDOODY (oh damn there is such a good bathroom humor joke in there), has launched a new campaign called North of Expected. The campaign juxtaposes bathroom technology FAIL with Alaska Airlines technology success and why the airline is so great because of it.

Supporting the television commercial are radio, newspaper, outdoor, transit and web.

Oh, and before we forget. Thank you Alaska Airlines. Thank you for taking us back to one of our earliest rants ever here on Adrants. Z-Fold FTW!

One of the biggest complaints about CP+B's wacked-out Gates/Seinfeld campaign was that it didn't really do much to push the product. In fact, it didn't mention the product at all.

As you recall, that effort was fast followed by "I'm a PC," which did mention the product, but not in any technical or deeply informative way.

Here's the latest suite of MSFT fumbles, labeled "Laptop Hunters." In this installment, an incredibly smug human being called Giampaolo shows us all how precious, how picky, how tech he is(n't especially) -- while on a quest to find the perfect (MSFT-subsidized) laptop.

Marketing 2.0 took place at ESCP-EAP University in Paris this year. It spanned both Monday and Tuesday.

I moderated a few panels and the wifi was down both days, so there was no way to cover the event in the detail I would've liked. Before my camera died though, I tried this thing where I just recorded random snippets of speaker talks.

This post is devoted entirely to Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media at Southwest.

I don't have particularly strong feelings about Southwest, but seeing her discuss its approach to consumers -- in both good times and bad -- made me wanna do the cattle call after all. She's good people, and it seems like she addresses situations with humility and openness instead of just reacting. Her presence at Southwest speaks more for its corporate culture than for any social media strategem.

Liberty Mutual continues its ongoing Responsibility Project with this :60 ad. You get the gist: a kid talks about doing the right thing while a melange of intimate family images scroll by in soft light.

See previous work, which is equally sappy but for the most part well-produced. We may be over this idea, but LibMu's commitment to the Responsibility Project will probably go a long way toward making it the Coca-Cola of insurance.

Really. Give it a couple of years; it may be a one-way conversation, but for work like this, consistency is key.

Work by Hill Holliday in partnership with Harmony Korine, which -- oddly enough -- wrote and directed Gummo, another film with a sympathetic kid whose environment may or may not convince you to invest in a little bit of insurance.

By now, you've all seen the Boost Mobile television campaign in which things are, well, just wrong. and, in some cases, really gross.

It is with great relief we share with you another phase of the campiagn that is, well, not gross at all and, in fact, makes a whole lot more sense than the television campaign. With a 180LA-created 3D transit campaign in Chicago, Boost Mobile is getting to the heart of the matter; it doesn't do contracts. And the shelter installation illustrate that by shredding actual phone contracts before our very eyes.

Now that's way kinder than subjecting us to visuals of a coroner dropping his lunch into a corpse and a girl riding a bike who hasn't shaved her armpits since she was born.

It's a sad fact infomercials work. They scream at you. They assault you with cheesy graphics. They pummel you over and over again with a call to action.

Know what else is a sad fact? That the Catholic Church has to use the shtick to get people to confess their sins during Holy Week. Yes, the Catholic Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Center has kooked up with the Forza Migliozzi agency to create Soul Wow which aims to fill confessional booths in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island Monday, April 6.

Aw...look. It's butter that's nice to bread and croissants. How is this GayLee spreadable butter so
nice? Because it's not hard, spreads easily and doesn't destroy what it's being applied to.

But come on.

Have we really arrived at a place where we need a product like this when all one needs to do is store regular butter out of the refrigerator where is won't get hard and will spread just as easily as a "spreadable" butter which is likely filled with unnecessary chemical ingredients?

Many brands use analogies to help explain their product features and benefits. Even makers of diapers for grownups. But seriously, WTF? Touting the new line of Depends by comparing the fact they're different to the fact men drive differently than women and commentary on who rules the world; men or women?

Ray Ban's promoting a technicolor melange of plastic Aviators with a Cutwater-orchestrated ad called "Drill," where a big plastic drill with crayons strapped to the front of it wreaks havoc on a sedate canvas.